Confused...my 3DMark went down after overclocking

[Slugbait]

Running default at 1.6G on a P4B533, I'm getting over 6000. My first run before o/c was 6099, then after o/c and dropping my CPU back to 1.6G again, I got 6222.

Between those two scores, I o/c'd to 2.4G, and got a score of 5607.

All I did in the BIOS was to bump my FSB to 150, and it booted fine at 2.4G. Additional notes: Prime95 benchmark didn't run very long, and while the torture test lastest longer, it stopped after about a half-hour saying there was a hardware failure. When set at 1.6a, CPU temp is around 41C, while at 2.4G it's around 50C...Asus Probe sez it's OK at 50C, but perhaps it's running a bit too hot(?)

System:
W98SE, P4B533 (onboard C-Media audio, 1004 bios I believe), 1.6a stock heatsink and fan, 512 megs PC2700 Samsung (generic PCB), Compro Ti-200 Personal Cinema (not o/c'd), Voodoo5 5500 PCI (disabled), 75GXP 30G, 60GXP 40G, Adaptec 2940UW, Plextor TSI 40x, HP 9200i, Sony 5x DVD, 10/100 NIC (can't remember what brand...NetGear?)

Is there something else I need to tweak in the BIOS? FYI, this is the first time I've ever tried o/c, tho' I've built numerous machines.

Thanks

 

[fatbaby]

hmmm

i have a p4 1.8a @ 2ghz (gonna oc more later), 256 pc2100 ddr, gf3 ti200, 40gb wdc 7200 rpm hd and i get 6500...thats still low!

 

[bjc112]

Sometimes when you overclock TOO far, you lose points... odd, but it happens...

try a few different settings...

 

[bjc112]

Originally posted by: fatbaby
hmmm

i have a p4 1.8a @ 2ghz (gonna oc more later), 256 pc2100 ddr, gf3 ti200, 40gb wdc 7200 rpm hd and i get 6500...thats still low!

I get 7000..

T-bird 1.2 @1.4 Gf3 @ ti 500 speed.. .

That p4 should be pushing you much further...

 

[fatbaby]

what is the standard settings for 3dmark 2k1 se benchmarks? 1024x768x32? 1024x768x16? aa on? vs on?

 

[bjc112]

1024x768x32 no AA no anything!

 

[Slugbait]

Settings are 1024x768x32, no AA, frame buffer is set for double, texture format is set to compressed, z-buffer is set to 32-bit, rendering pipeline is D3D Pure hardware T&L.

 

[naddicott]

The 3D Mark app has an option to reset to its defaults, which looks like 1024x768x32 no AA.

Having AA on can take a big chunk out of that benchmark. My GF4 Ti4400 has an option in its preferences to override application AA preferences and always use your choice of AA algorythims. I had to turn that back to 'use application settings' when I was trying to benchmark my attempts at overclocking the video card this week.

I get 10400 3D marks with a 1.6A overclocked to 2.13Ghz and the Ti4400 overclocked to just under 4600 speeds. With the proprietary Nvidia AA on, I got somewhere around 7000 (but it did seem to subjectively look better).

Also in my BIOS there was an option to adjust my AGP aperature settings. I foolishly assumed I should up that setting to 128MB, the same as my card, but I read recently that the reccomended aperature setting is 1/2 of the card's RAM, and sometimes needs to be set even less for agressive Video card overclocks.

There was another AGP BIOS setting that sounded like it would improve my performance but actually lowered the benchmark when turned on, but I forget what it was called - write speed buffering or something.

Also, I ran the benchmark on a almost new WD SE 7200 RPM drive with the 8mb cache, so hard disk fragmentation/speed probably wasn't bottlenecking the process.

 

[TheWart]

who cares about synthetic benchmark stuff, just load a game and use the in-game framecounter to tell you if it is worth it! (then again, try a non-game benchmark since 3dmark is just a nvidia-heinie kisser anyway lol).

 

[SgtZulu]

try format c:

 

[bjc112]

Originally posted by: SgtZulu
try format c:

LOL


a bit extreme for a small "point loss" in 3dmark!

 

[AnAndAustin]

Well as far as gaming goes your GF3TI200 is holding you back, o/c'ing the CPU will give very little returns as the gfx card is maxed out anyway. Unless you encode and stuff I would suggest forgetting about o/c'ing the CPU & FSB and concentrate on o/c'ing the gfx card, or replacing it.

Anyway, what you are experiencing is almost certainly the 'dividers' at work. At default 100x4=400FSB your PCI is at 1/3 of 100mhz, ie 33.3mhz and your AGP is at 66.6mhz, your RAM may be the same as FSB (RIMM) or at a divider/ratio (DDR). So to keep it simple you find the following:

100x4=400FSB Divider=1/3 PCI=33.3 AGP=66.6
133x4=533FSB Divider=1/4 PCI=33.3 AGP=66.6
150x4=600FSB Divider=1/5 PCI=30.0 AGP=60.0

The 150x4=600FSB will need to use the 1/5 divider because the PCI speed would be above 36mhz, the PCI won't work relaibly at this speed so a higher divider must be used, try a 140x4=560FSB and you should find the PCI=35.0 and AGP=70.0 and therefore these divices and their communications are getting a 5% speed boost. Setting a 150x4=600FSB results in a 10% drop for these devices, thus your gfx card and PCI will run much slower than they would at 140x4=560FSB.

 

[WarCon]

But the addition 800 mhz would of more than made up the slight difference in AGP transfers. If he wasn't Prime95 stable then he was probably having to do too much error correction in the processor. Back it down to 2.133 and run it and see if it improves.

I have a Gf3Ti200 at 220/500 and at 2.4ghz, I am getting ~8600 3DMarks, so there is something else wrong.

 

[Slugbait]

Actually, I had already tried at 2.133 before I read your post, WarCon. I also tried the latest Detonator drivers. Prime95 still fails, 3DMark still hovers around the same score.

format c: /q is sounding a little better...I must have installed something that's whacking me.

 

[Insidious]

Sometimes when you overclock TOO far, you lose points... odd, but it happens

That's right on the money. It's because your system is compensating for read errors.

If you do your OC in small increments instead of such a huge jump, you will see your 3DMark scores increase to a point and then begin to decrease as you OC further.

Use small steps, and leave it at the peak... like it or not, that's all yer gonna get by raising bus speed.

All I did in the BIOS was to bump my FSB to 150, and it booted fine at 2.4G. Additional notes: Prime95 benchmark didn't run very long, and while the torture test lastest longer, it stopped after about a half-hour saying there was a hardware failure. When set at 1.6a, CPU temp is around 41C, while at 2.4G it's around 50C...Asus Probe sez it's OK at 50C, but perhaps it's running a bit too hot(?)

not too hot, just trying to run it too fast. if you raise speed until the machine won't even boot you are VERY far past any sensible OC

 

[AnAndAustin]

All very good points Insidious, but don't forget your benchmarks and 3Dmark scores will decrease in perf when a higher divider is used as the bandwidth of both PCI and AGP drop around 20% (that means at 4x AGP bus speed drops about 40mhz), rem to keep an eye on your PCI (and therefore AGP) bus speed as this may account for lower scores, esp if your gfx card is maxed out and unable to take advantage of the increase in CPU, RAM and FSB speeds.

 

[Slugbait]

Well, I took SgtZulu's advice. I figured perhaps it was some program I installed from the mobo CD called "Intel Application Accelerator" or whatever...blasted thing couldn't be uninstalled. And I was thinking, "Is this like the insidious Find Fast?" (no offense, Insidious...)

Alas, scores haven't changed much with a completely clean machine. Even downloaded and tried bld330 of 3DMark (I was previously using bld300). I hover right around 6200 at 2.2G now (a wee bit better), and that's without overclocking the video card. I won't be replacing the card, simply cuz a) it's Personal Cinema, and there are few PC video cards out there faster than an MX400, b) I just bought it and didn't want to go overboard with a GF4 PC card, and c) it beats the daylights out of my G200 Marvel for speed and general "wow factor".

There's obviously more for me to learn about dividers, memory timing and such. I'll give the latest BIOS an install in the next couple of days after I read more on reader reviews, see how that goes. In the meantime, I bumped the sucker up to 2.48G and left it idle all day while I was doing the family thang...chip didn't melt (that's a good thing

Thanks for all the remarks and posts

 

[human2k]

thats pretty low..........I built a 1.8A@2.3GHZ with Samsung pc2700 512mb and a Radeon 8500LE 128mb (290/290) and it does 10K.

 

[Chad]

Well, here are my results... I don't feel like explaining them all, as I just did this test all day. I wrote the results as I went... FSB is front side bus, the 4 digit number are my 3dmark 2k1 scores and where I felt needed prime95 test.

Note my Epox 4g4a motherboard supports PCI/AGP "lock". But what is very strange is that when I used that feature, the board became less stable... otherwise my AGP = fsb*2/4 and PCI = fsb/4


FSB - 140 - 8413
FSB - 145 - 8580
FSB - 148 - 8681
FSB - 149 - 8674 (AGP/PCI Locked)
FSB - 150 - 8730
FSB - 150 - 8872, 8829 (with memory tweaks) - Prime95[PASS]
FSB - 151 - 8754, 8700, 8685
FSB - 151 - 8903, 8844, 8820 (with memory tweaks) - Prime95[FAIL]
FSB - 151 - 8716, DNF (AGP/PCI Locked)
FSB - 152 - 8793, 8805, 8772, 8736, 8713, 8700
FSB - 152 - 8872, 8823, 8923, 8910 (with memory tweaks) - Prime95[FAIL]
FSB - 152 - 8742, DNF (AGP/PCI Locked)
FSB - 153 - 8813, DNF
FSB - 153 - DNF, ??? (AGP/PCI Locked)
FSB - 154 - DNF, ???
FSB - 154 - DNF, ??? (AGP/PCI Locked)
FSB - 155 - DNF, ???
FSB - 155 - DNF, ??? (AGP/PCI Locked)


Note these results don't seem to support this theory about scores peaking before you reach your max overclock. Even where I was inable to complete simply two 3d mark runs in a row, the first result showed that I was getting a higher score... and that's when obviously I wasn't completely stable... so I don't think these guy are right about that (at least not in my case). Maybe it's different for everyone else.

 

[CelticDemolition]

you may have whacked your hd, too... thats what happened to me. all of a sudden my 3dmark score plummeted by more than 500 and there was a really noticeable reduction in frame rate on avp2 (even after reinstallation of the game)... i had to back it off from 1600x1200 to 1152xwhatever for it to remain playable. then i scandisked and found and fixed like a half dozen errors. avp2 continued to crawl until i reformatted and reinstalled windows. i think i was at 145 fsb when this happened. course, i was running my hd off the highpoint controller, i think it just doesnt oc well. next try i'll throw it on the regular ide channel...

 

[Insidious]

The only other suggestion I would have is to remember that 3DMark has (or at least used to have.. don't know if it ever got fixed or not) a "memory hole"

Common belief was that this led to the inability to run in a continuous looping benchmark for unlimited iterations.

To free up all of your system resources for a 3DMark run, you must first (or at least used to have to..... etc.) shutdown your computer and then run 3DMark as

the first app. for consistant (well, as consistant as this benchy will allow) results.

Beyond that, I think you are telling us that your performance is not consistant with what you are reading about other people's performance. Don't get discouraged,

Keep looking, you'll find it!

Happy 'Pootin'